Talk:Alaska Department of Corrections

WhisperToMe, would you care to explain the point of these edits to this article and List of Alaska state prisons? In the case of the latter, I believe that random, meaningless information backed by random, meaningless sources and wikilinks to articles which also fail to provide real information runs afoul of WP:INDISCRIMINATE. To that end, I took the time to add a little bit of prose preceding the list, which you proceeded to tag-bomb the fuck out of. If you're expecting some other editor to play dog in a game of go fetch, I hope you're ready for it.

To start, in this article, you leave intact the statement that Joe Schmidt is the department's commissioner, for no reason that I can see other than the happenstance existence of a ref tag at the end of the statement. Not only is it a primary source when countless secondary sources exist, but clicking on that link today takes me to a page which makes no mention of Joe Schmidt. Schmidt was there because he was one of Sarah Palin's Mat-Su Valley clique. Common sense would tell anyone that there was next to zero chance of his continuing in that job under Bill Walker for that very reason. As it was a fairly recent event, there are numerous secondary sources which reported that Walker abruptly fired Schmidt's replacement (I've already forgotten his name) and that Walt Monegan is currently interim commissioner (see here). The failure to recognize something as important as this makes it plainly obvious that factual accuracy is not among your motivations here. Then again, factual accuracy always seems to be treated as a tenet which exists to be cherry-picked at will. The reason for the aforementioned abrupt firing was due to the ever-rising body count in DOC facilities, particularly at the Anchorage Jail, and the seeming indifference of DOC staff and higher-ups to the problem. Once again, any number of secondary sources exist to this effect. You're saying that bringing those sources to the fore is someone else's problem, but not yours? As there has been a concerted effort to whitewash anything which may make law enforcement "look bad", no matter how many reliable sources exist, I'm not so sure I want to go there.

"The State of Alaska assumed jurisdiction over its corrections on January 3, 1959. Prior to statehood, the Federal Bureau of Prisons had correctional jurisdiction over Alaska." Once again, backed by a primary source. Once again, the factual accuracy is in question. The United States territorial court didn't relinquish its jurisdiction to the state court system and the statehood-era federal district court until February 1960, as referred to in both Who's Who in Alaskan Politics by Evangeline Atwood and R. N. DeArmond (1977) and the district court's 2010 publication celebrating its 50th anniversary. There were also local police departments and local jails throughout territorial times, and municipal magistrate courts existed for about a decade or so prior to statehood to relieve the burden on the federal court (only four judges were authorized for Alaska from 1909 until statehood, even though Alaska's population increased nearly fourfold in that time).

I deleted the mention of Hiland Mountain. Once again, any number of secondary sources are out there which can attest to the mere existence of Hiland Mountain, which was the only thing accomplished by that particular piece of prose. I see no rationale for why it's important to mention Hiland Mountain and not mention any other prison in Alaska, other than (again!) the happenstance existence of a citation.

The only source not directly connected to DOC is one to the Officer Down Memorial Page. I've read enough about fallen officers to understand that ODMP's information isn't exactly in harmony with pre-web and other paper sources. That and the tone of the website leads me to consider it a POV-pushing "source". I shouldn't have to explain the problem there. These sections have been deleted from other articles, with WP:NOTMEMORIAL normally given as the rationale. Additionally, the articles I dug up from just one source (Little, Jon; Demer, Lisa (November 20, 2002). "Wreck kills 5 outside Seward". Anchorage Daily News. Anchorage. p. A1.; Little, Jon (November 21, 2002). "Truck hit van, troopers report". Anchorage Daily News. Anchorage. p. A1.; Demer, Lisa (January 8, 2004). "No criminal charges in deadly wreck". Anchorage Daily News. Anchorage. p. B1.) all prominently mention that four inmates died along with Jamie Hesterberg. In Pugh, Margaret (November 27, 2002). "Bus crash highlights correctional officers' sacrifices". Anchorage Daily News. Anchorage. p. B8., an editorial by the outgoing commissioner (as at that particular time, Tony Knowles was a lame duck and Frank Murkowski was the governor-elect), Pugh also mentions the four inmates in more-or-less equal measure with Hesterberg. Looks to me like this section as currently worded is a blatant case of undue weight brought on by someone's cherry-picking of sources, and just left that way for all these years.

I didn't remove the stub template when I made my edit for one simple reason: an article which say very little of consequence is still generally regarded as a stub no matter how many section headers, images or citations you add to it. Again, see WP:INDISCRIMINATE.

Now, on to the list and your tag bombing. You appear to object to the statement "Prior to the establishment of the department during the early 1980s, corrections was a division of the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services". Like I said before, I hope you're ready for it. Among the last pile of books I obtained to add to my ever-growing collection were books containing the FY62 and FY63 budgets for the state. Both budgets' line items pertaining to corrections were listed under the Division of Youth and Adult Authority of the Department of Health and Welfare (Committee Substitute for House Bill 42 aka Chapter 147 of Session Laws of Alaska 1961; Committee Substitute for House Bill 317 aka Chapter 167 of Session Laws of Alaska 1962). In Eppenbach, Sarah; Foster, Scott, eds. (1983). "Executive Branch". Alaska Blue Book (Sixth ed.). Juneau: Alaska Department of Education, Division of State Libraries. p. 39., the Division of Adult Corrections is mentioned under the Department of Health and Social Services. A footnote at the end of that subsection reads as follows:

Note: On January 17, 1983 Governor Bill Sheffield issued Executive Order No. 54 to establish a separate department of corrections. The Legislature disapproved the Executive Order on March 16, 1983 but continued to work on their version of a department of corrections. By Blue Book deadline no final action had been taken.

The following edition (Foster, Scott, ed. (1985). "Executive Branch". Alaska Blue Book (Seventh ed.). Juneau: Alaska Department of Education, Division of State Libraries. pp. 24–25.) does mention a Department of Corrections with the following under it: office of the commissioner, three regional operations headquarters reporting to the deputy commissioner, divisions of statewide programs and facilities management, the board of parole and the prison industries commission. No specific information was provided pertaining to the date of establishment, but the biography of then-commissioner Roger V. Endell does provide some insights:

A 23-year Alaskan who has worked on correctional problems and issues over nearly 13 of those years.

...and had been working toward completion of the Ph.D. in criminology from Florida State University before his appointment by Governor Sheffield in January 1983 to manage the State's correctional system.

More recently, Associate Professor of Justice at the School of Justice, University of Alaska, Anchorage, where he conducted numerous studies and research projects on correctional issues

Guest of the Finnish Ministry of Justice on two separate occasions when he studied Finland's system of corrections, alcohol and justice research programs.

I barely remember the name Roger Endell, but the above makes him out to be a awfully heavy hitter, as if he were brought in by Sheffield more to fix something horribly broken than this simply being a change of the guard coincidental with a new governor. Unfortunately, I need a better reason to go look up newspaper articles from 1982 and 1983 than your gratuitous tag-bombing. In fact, I've probably spent enough time on this as it is. I only bothered because I've seen editing activity similar to this on just about a daily basis as of late. It's almost as if we're getting ready for Wikipedia's upcoming 15th anniversary by leading content in the direction of looking pretty, but really only useful to readers who are so dumbed down that they're incapable of getting their information anywhere else but Wikipedia. Meanwhile, to the rest of us, it's quite easy to wipe the turd polish away and see something rushing headlong in the direction of complete bullshit, or to be kinder, strictly content for content's sake rather than anything which helps readers gain an encyclopedic understanding of the subject. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 02:20, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

@RadioKAOS: The tone in above statements are perplexing. The grand total of what I've added to this page recently is here, And what I've added to the Alaska state prisons list. So...

• 1. " Once again, backed by a primary source. Once again, the factual accuracy is in question." - Firstly, primary sources are explicitly allowed, especially when describing non-controversial, basic facts. I don't see anything controversial in saying when the BOP relinquished correctional jurisdiction. Secondly, if Who's Who in Alaskan Politics by Evangeline Atwood and R. N. DeArmond (1977) contradicts this, please get the exact page number which makes the relevant statements and cite the page number there. It would be preferable if it was on Google Books.
• 2. "you leave intact the statement that Joe Schmidt is the department's commissioner" - I did not even think to update the commissioner. The best way to deal with that honestly is just insert an {{asof|???}} to remind people that this stuff goes out of date.
• 3. "which you proceeded to tag-bomb the fuck out of" - Does this set of revisions, with one tag total involved, look like a tag bombing?
• 4. "The only source not directly connected to DOC is one to the Officer Down Memorial Page. I've read enough about fallen officers to understand that ODMP's information isn't exactly in harmony with pre-web and other paper sources." I didn't put that in there. Feel free to delete it if you like.
• 5. "I deleted the mention of Hiland Mountain. Once again, any number of secondary sources are out there which can attest to the mere existence of Hiland Mountain, which was the only thing accomplished by that particular piece of prose." - There was one other thing it accomplished: it tells the reader where women are confined, long-term, in the Alaska prison system. Women don't go to the same long-term prisons as men, and there are far fewer of them in corrections systems, even today, then in men. The reader needs to know where women are incarcerated for long periods of time, and he/she needs to see this info on the DOC Wikipedia page. Maybe you may think the info is best posted at List of Alaska state prisons. I think that page should be merged into this one, since there are so few state prisons in Alaska.
• 6. The above "wall of text" is way too long and goes into actions that I never did (in regards to Officer Down an who the current commissioner is).

WhisperToMe (talk) 04:01, 15 December 2015 (UTC)